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by mysterymistakes



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Body Worship, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Azure Moon, Scars, Trauma, scar tracing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:22:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26147122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterymistakes/pseuds/mysterymistakes
Summary: He runs his first finger, gentle and reverent, along a faded slash that cuts diagonally from the top of Dimitri’s left shoulder down to where his ribs become his waist. It was from a short axe, Dimitri had said, and he’d received it quite young. His father’s hunting party had been ambushed in the night. Though it had been thrown by an untrained hand, he may well have lost his life had it not been for the young dog handler who stepped in front of the second one.His name was Maxwell,Dimitri had told Claude, staring solemnly in front of him,I regret the years I could not leave flowers on his grave.Dimitri isn't fond of thunderstorms.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 7
Kudos: 105





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [pokerharem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pokerharem/gifts).



> hello! this is set after azure moon. please note that this fic centers around scarring and the act of becoming scarred/bodily trauma.

Claude is ill-equipped for the Faerghus summer.

It’s _humid;_ the midyear months bring in with them a wet, oppressive heat that only gets worse as autumn lurks on the horizon. It’s not like this in Almyra, where the arid, daytime desert heat and the icy-cold nights do well to balance each other out, nor is it like this on the waters of Derdriu, where the ocean keeps them cool despite the scorching sun. No, in Fhridiad, it is unflinchingly damp and hot all day and all night and Claude has never involuntarily sweat this much in a single season. The summertime atmosphere brings with it an electric charge as the sun begins to set, coaxing thunderstorms for cover as it does, and only then, and only sometimes, is there respite to be found in the heavy sheets of rain that flood the streets and choke the land. Claude likes the thunderstorms. They’d scared him at first, if he’s being honest. They roll in fast and loud and come crashing down with gusto to mercilessly soak everything caught in their paths, but he’s found that they make him sleepy, when he’s not running for cover. The rhythmic _pitter-patter_ against the windows of Dimitri’s kingly chambers and the distant rumbling make the world seem static around the edges, softer and fuzzier when he’s tucked safely away in one of the large, plush armchairs that litter their bedroom, a book in his lap and his love within an arm’s reach. Claude thinks they’re nice.

Dimitri doesn’t care for thunderstorms at _all._

The pressure changes dredge up old aches from within his bones and beckon long-ago battles to the forefront of his mind, memories etched into honed muscle and wily sinew that he wishes he could forget. It’s never an acute pain. Something pulled or scraped or bruised could be easily remedied by the wave of a hand rendered soft by white magic and gone in moments. Instead, it’s a dull throb that weaves its way between his joints to take root where long-gone cartilage should be, curls around the discs of his spine and oozes into the many, many scars that litter his body. These pains are deep and incurable; they draw him inward and make him irritable.

Tonight is one such evening. They’re fresh from the huge soaking-tub allotted to the King, a vat large enough for Dimitri and Claude both to sink in up to their necks and still have space to sprawl. Yet damp- dewy, more like- they sit naked on the bed, lightweight summer blankets of rich blue and dazzling silver swirled around their waists as the stained-glass image of a lion with a double-headed eagle crushed between its jaws looms behind them. Claude isn’t very fond of that window. It’s gaudy, he thinks, smoothing a balm of camphor and mint across Dimitri’s aching back. He presses the heel of his palm into an angry knot set between Dimitri’s shoulder blades. Claude knows there’s no real difference between the window and the conquests memorialized in his rugs half a world away, but that window is supposed to be a reminder of times long past. It was never meant to be relived, much less written across their bodies. Instead, it fills his nose with the stinging smell of smoke and makes him think of a dagger that missed its mark. The story of the window is inked pearlescent-smooth into their skin. Outside, the rain is deafening.

Claude marvels at Dimitri’s back as he works. It’s broad and powerful. Dimitri, unsurprisingly, has kept up with his training in the time since his coronation. It’s a way for him to relax and think things through, and it’s kept him in fighting form. Nonetheless, it’s scarred, as all of Dimitri is, a haphazard latticework of slashes and stabs and burns that stretches from the base of his neck down to his tailbone. Claude knows some of their stories. He runs his first finger, gentle and reverent, along a faded slash that cuts diagonally from the top of Dimitri’s left shoulder down to where his ribs become his waist. This one was from a short axe, Dimitri had said, and he’d received it quite young. His father’s hunting party had been ambushed in the night. Though it had been thrown by an untrained hand, he may well have lost his life had it not been for the young dog handler who stepped in front of the second one. _His name was Maxwell,_ Dimitri had told Claude, staring solemnly in front of him, _I regret the years I could not leave flowers on his grave._ Claude follows the path of his finger with a line of soft kisses. The balm on Dimitri’s back makes his lips tingle. Dimitri, surprisingly, relaxes into it, and it makes Claude smile, small and tender.

Claude keeps tracing over the scars on Dimitri’s back, placing kisses here and there. Burns from the fires of Duscur that lick along his hips, hallmarks of cruel Faerghan training that scrape along his sides, places where his armor had failed him in one way or another. Claude smooths his hands down until they come to rest at his waist. He tips forward, rests his forehead against Dimitri’s back, just above a jagged gash from his exile. Claude knows Dimitri hates those scars the most. He mourns the fact that he does not know the names of those whose lives he took, regrets deeply and wholly that he cannot recall their faces, that he cannot leave flowers on their graves as well. Despite everything, he is warm and solid in front of Claude. Beneath the strong mint of the balm, he still smells of favored bath oils, of lavender for relaxation and frankincense to soothe. It fills Claude’s chest with an ache, a sort of wistfulness that he often feels in moments like this. His hands begin to wander again, brushing over long-healed mounds and valleys as he breathes. It hurts to know that the person he loves most in the world, the one who brings light to his days and comfort to his nights, has been through so much agony. His breath hitches as he catches one particular scar. It’s long and thin with splintered edges, like a piece of wood ripped from the rest of its board, too spongy and too tender for how long he’s had it. Hot, hot tears begin to prick at the corners of Claude’s eyes as he slides trembling fingers across the space it has cut between Dimitri’s ribs.

It’s from Failnaught.

Claude had put it there. His breath rattles through his ribcage as the tears spill over and drop onto the Blaiddyd-blue quilt.

Grondor.

It had been raining. The battle was in full swing. Smoke had stung his eyes, blood and ozone filling his mouth and his nose and burning down into his lungs, war cries and clashing metals swimming between his ears. Above the ground and through the haze, he could see the glow of Freikeugel as it swung in great, sweeping arcs, flashes of blackish-purple and greenish-white magic bursting to life before their casters. Carcasses littered the ground. The stronghold burned with the stench of charred flesh and molten metal. 

All he’d seen was the glow of an unfamiliar Relic as it rushed towards Hilda. His body moved before his mind could follow. Muscle memory kicked in, intent deadly, and let fly a red-tipped arrow. Only after did he realize that it was Areadbhar, out there in the smoke.

Relics are not made to allow survivors. They are supposed to be perfect weapons, crafted from the bodies of gods to rip and shred their way through anything so that even if those met with the wrong end survive the blow, it’s hopeless. Failnaught is no exception. Its tri-pointed arrowheads fly in a corkscrew and don’t stop until they’ve run out of their initial momentum, piercing anything and everything in their path. It had sliced effortlessly through the outside of Dimitri’s thick plate-armor and taken flesh with it. It is nothing short of a miracle that he had not killed Dimitri.

There’s a warm, calloused hand sliding over his own. Claude screws his eyes shut. Shame and bile block his voice, constrict his airways so he can do nothing but gasp in ragged, broken breaths as he cries. He’d given his Relic away for a reason.

“These things happen in war.” Dimitri murmurs, lacing his fingers with Claude’s to pull them from the scar, shifting around so they’re facing each other. Claude almost has to laugh- it sounds so much like what he tells Dimitri time and time again. “I’m still here, as are you.” He brings his free hand to Claude’s cheek, cups it so gently and so lovingly that it just makes Claude cry harder as he leans into it, covers it with his own. “Oh, beloved,” Dimitri whispers. He places Claude’s hands back on his waist to pepper his face with adoring kisses, each one interspersed with an affection. _Darling,_ he says, _dearest. My sun, my stars, my everything._ They make Claude smile despite himself, snotty and hiccupping as he is, squeezing out all that shame, that sorrow and regret. Dimitri is so _earnest,_ so determined in his love that it leaves no room for doubt. It grounds Claude, helps his breathing even back out and makes the pounding in his head subside.

“Do you remember when you got this scar, my love?” Dimitri asks. Claude’s eyes are still shut, lashes clumped and glued together by tears, but he can feel Dimitri tracing a mark on his collarbone. It’s some six, seven years old now, sat halfway between his neck and his shoulder, faded and barely noticeable. He nods. He can hear the smile in Dimitri’s voice as he talks. “It’s from the day we had our first kiss.” It’s true- their first kiss had come about in a way that was so horribly _them._ Claude had asked Dimitri to spar, back when they were young and in love but dancing around it as schoolboys are wont to do.

“You looked so handsome in that summer uniform,” Claude says. The words are thick in his mouth, cottony. “Can you blame me?” 

“I thought I had really hurt you,” Dimitri chuckles. “You were bleeding when you fell.”

“Oh, please.” Claude grumbles, raising his hands to scrub at his face, to push away salt and anguish. “It takes more than a bad dodge to keep me down.” They laugh together, warm and safe, and Claude drops his hands down to his lap. He takes a deep breath of storm-cooled night air. _In, out._

When he opens his eyes, he falls in love all over again.

Dimitri looks at him like he’s the most precious thing in the world. It’s the same look he’d worn when hovering over Claude that very first time on the dusty floor of the training grounds, the first time Claude had ever felt like he could be something to someone else. Reverence and awe swim through that single icy-blue eye, pure and unbidden and it bowls Claude over. The soft light of the candles sprinkled throughout the room cast him in a delicate glow that makes his hair shine like the spun gold of fairytales, evidences the pink high on his cheekbones. He smiles something small and true as his hands wander Claude’s body, over the tales of survival etched into him. Dimitri often tells him that he admires Claude’s scars. _They are signs of your strength and valor, my love,_ he’ll say, and Claude will blush, because he always does, no matter how many times Dimitri smothers him in endearments, _you wear them well._

His hands wander further, smooth over the jut of Claude’s hip bones to rest at the small of his back. Instinctively, his gut fills with a familiar warmth. It does not nag, nor press insistently at him. Rather, it simply settles there, content to serve as a reminder of the pleasure they draw from each other as Dimitri continues to trace.

“What about this one?” Dimitri murmurs. Claude’s contented smile, one he hadn’t noticed he’d been wearing, slides slowly from his lips, and something heavy rests again on his chest.

“Derdriu,” he says. “I remember it well.”

Dark magic does not scar naturally. It bubbles and blisters in patterns unique to each spell, bastardizes holy geometry and imprints it onto the victim. Ornate, overlapping triangles have seared themselves across Claude’s tailbone and race frantically up his spine, carrying with them the memory of acrid ozone and life almost lost to a violent purple haze. It flips through his mind’s eye like a picture-reel. The eleventh hour of the battle waged among abandoned storefronts and fled homes. Red in the streets and blood in the water, staining the canals an ugly brown. Dimitri, battered and covered in the filth of others, standing defiantly before Arundel. His bloodlust had gotten the better of him. Blinded by rage cruel in its familiarity, he’d lunged forwards, but the tip of his spear had missed its mark, and Claude, brazenly, foolishly, dove from his mount to take the brunt of the blast in Dimitri’s stead. He can recall the pain clear as day.

“It’s from when you saved my life.” Dimitri presses a kiss just above Claude’s brow. “You came for me; despite the fact I had lost myself. Perhaps, even, because of it.” Another kiss. “I will never be able to put to words how much it means to me, Claude.” He pulls back a tiny bit, puts a hair’s breadth of space between them that feels more like a chasm to Claude. Dimitri looks solemn, now. His face has fallen flat and he stares at his hands in Claude’s lap like they’re something foreign to him. “I can only hope to earn my scars the same dignity.” Claude’s heart drops.

Dimitri does not wear his skin with ease. Each time he sees himself reflected in a mirror, a window, the polished marble of the castle floors or the tranquil surface of the garden pools, he is forcibly reminded of the atrocities he committed, the countless lives he took and the countless lives his actions cost. Claude knows that Dimitri finds his body shameful. He thinks his hands damaged and clumsy, rendered useless by the fires of Duscur so long ago. He says they’re best fit for curling around a lance, for the battlefield, not the careful chess of politicking he now finds himself playing more often than not. He hates how he must enlist the help of scribes, but Claude sees how he treats them with all the respect in the world, ensures that they are well provided for, and how he quietly practices his penmanship whenever he can. He strives for atonement with each action he takes, but never thinks it anywhere near enough. It pains Claude. He scoops Dimitri’s hands into his own, showers them with kisses before cradling them to his bare chest.

“I know.” Claude says. The air around them is still and fragile. “You earn them their dignity every day, Dimitri.” He laces their fingers together. “I can’t speak for all of Faerghus, and I can’t speak for the people we’ve killed,” he pauses, waits to be turned down before he forges onwards, “but I can speak for myself, as the man who loves you more than anything.” Dimitri takes in a breath, deep and shaky. “Can I tell you some of my favorite things about you?” He asks. Dimitri nods, but doesn’t look up, still staring down at the blankets between them, like they’ll protect him from the evils of the world the way they did when he was young.

“Your wrists,” Claude says, holding them like precious jewels. Their twin damages are shiny and smooth, like his skin had been stretched too thin when it was wrapped around the bone. “These are from when you escaped. They mean you have a fire in you to stay alive. You got out so you could fight for what you believe in.” He takes both Dimitri’s hands in one of his own to slide the other up across trembling shoulders and rest atop a burn. Dimitri seems so small in this moment, raw and hurting and curled in on himself, a far cry from the beloved, steadfast regent Claude knows him to be. He is so, so _strong,_ and Claude reminds him of this every chance he gets. “I know you don’t remember everything after you escaped, and I won’t ask you to, but you’ve told me the story of this one.” Tenderly, he brushes across the raised, pinkened skin. “It’s from when you took out a squad of imperials that were pillaging a town near Alliance territory, right?” Dimitri nods shallowly. “I heard about it after it happened. It gave me hope that you were _alive._ ”

It’s Dimitri’s turn to cry. Fat tears slide down his cheek to land where their hands are together, trickling down the seams of their fingers and wetting their palms. Claude takes his hand up the side of Dimitri’s neck to cup his jaw just the way Dimitri had done for him. He moves ever closer, kisses Dimitri just below his empty socket, where the lid has long been forced shut by the horrid blast of miasma that took it in the first place, sealed by intricate, interwoven circles that Claude finds beautiful. “And these hands,” he says, holding them between their chests, “These hands, that make me feel so good.” Dimitri chokes out a laugh. _There we go,_ Claude thinks. “These are the hands of a man who has survived everything. They’ve led their people through adversity, and now they lead a nation with dignity and _kindness._ ”

Dimitri looks at him then. His eye is clouded, red and brimming with unshed tears but free of the melancholy that had plagued it, and there’s a fragile smile that graces his lips. Claude’s heart swells with adoration, and he can’t help it when he surges up into Dimitri, fists his hands into his hair to kiss him like his life depends on it.

“I love you, so _much,_ Dimitri.” He says as they part, foreheads resting together. “All of you, always. No exceptions.”

Dimitri is smiling when he says, “And I you, my dearest Claude.”

Outside, the rain has subsided.

**Author's Note:**

> hehe... they r in love. thank you so much for reading, and many many thanks to Blues for comming this! 
> 
> i can be found on [twitter](https://twitter.com/mysterymistakes)


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